Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Hold on there just a second. First, you are unlikely to find too many pictures of broken steel frames because there are fewer steel frames out there being ridden. The vast majority of bicycles, especially modern ones, are aluminum with carbon coming up fast. There are a few pictures of broken steel frames around
like this one and
this one and
this one to name a few. I doubt any of them were "rideable" afterwards. I also doubt that the failure was slow as well. I've personally broken steel and aluminum frames (two each). The steel frames snapped audibly and were unrideable mostly because the axle snapped as well. Aluminum failed more gently and over a longer time frame. The aluminum bike creaked and groaned for a long time before it failed. I actually rode it for several weeks before I found out what the creaking was from.
Aluminum and carbon don't "shatter like glass" any more than steel does. Steel, being rigid is much more likely to shear suddenly than a soft material like aluminum...which tears...and carbon which is a fabric with alternating layers of fiber running in different directions.
Quite to the contrary - there are FAR more steel bikes in use than any other material by a wide margin. Do you think people are going to commute on a Trek Madone? Hell, try and buy a Schwinn Voyager off of Ebay. You can pick them up for a song and dance. And they are a hell of a lot less likely to get stolen or the U-lock sawed off. The bike messengers I've seen in San Francisco are riding steel single speeds. The rental bikes are all aluminum built so heavy that they might has well be steel.
You show one photo with the guy saying that the Specialized (which at the time was a cheapo brand)broke in the center of the downtube away from the lug when you could plainly see it broke at the lug of the steering tube. Then you can also see that the failed "unknown make" bike had been a long time out in the rain and with that cheap headset had allowed water into the steering tube where it rusted the lug/steering tube out. And why don't you see any braze in the joint? Cheaply built bikes of any material will have a short lifetime and that bike judging from the components was both cheap and I would guess 35 years old and not 25 as they guess. If you shatter a CF bike you generally are carried to the hospital. That broken 583 frame probably would not even dump you and could be ridden albeit carefully home.
If you've broken FOUR metal frames you had better tell us the circumstances and the makes and models of each before you imply for one second that CF is in any way safer.
“Anyone in a team who’s being honest with you will tell you how frequently their bikes are breaking; everybody knows,” said Mark Greve, a physician and assistant professor of sports medicine at Brown University who studied injuries to 3,500 competitive cyclists. “Few people in the public appreciate how many bikes a pro team will go through in a season, because they break"
"Doug Perovic, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Toronto, said carbon fibre was a bit like a diamond: strong while not being particularly tough."
By all means - after you've broken four metal frames be sure and continue riding a carbon fiber bike. Might I suggest a Ghost? You will soon have a lot in common.